Aren't all the current endings?

Nope. The Brotherhood improves the Commonwealth.

Ooooook, but why is it their responsibility to manage each synth? That would be tantamount to saying that it is the SS responsibility to look after each and every Minuteman and make sure they stay on the up and up. I think what you are brushing up against in your comment is the fear that people have that synths are predisposed to destroy and cause mayhem. But that simply isn't the case. Many of the synths are given new memories, escorted outside of the Commonwealth, and can go on to live their life (whatever life can be made in a post-apocalypse). In fact, I would argue that the Railroad probably does TOO much on the behalf of each synth, but that isn't really important for the basis of the discussion we are having.

Again, I'm not sure why everyone thinks that the people of the Railroad don't care about the rest of the Commonwealth just because they are focused on a single goal at the moment of freeing people from an organization of great power and resources. Everyone seems to forget that of all the organizations you can join, only two of them have the resources and manpower to do anything productive to help the people of the Commonwealth, and of those two only one is actually doing anything somewhat helpful. Besides, as the leader of the Minutemen, I have and do put resources forward to assist the people of the Commonwealth. So maybe the Railroad isn't dedicated to helping the Commonwealth, but as a key member of the organization, once the fires from destroying the Institute are put out, I imagine I could throw my weight around to help any cause I so decided. You can't take each organization in isolation, you have to be able to project a bit and wonder what might they do down the road. The Brotherhood and the Institute were very clear about their future goals, the Railroad not so much.

So I guess I don't find anything compelling about the argument/reason you put forth. It would be like if I freed a bunch of slaves from Paradise Falls in Fallout 3 and then they went on to join slavers themselves. This is actually almost directly comparable to a philosophical debate over what constitutes the right action in a given circumstance. Is it the action which is moral or is it the action that will produce the greatest good? Since I am a limited being, I can only make choices based upon what is moral; I don't have access to the future to see the benefits and outcomes of every action. I shouldn't have to either. Maximizing social and moral utility should not be the basis for our actions. We should act justly and humbly at all times, regardless of how others actions and choices will shape the future. I would rather do what is honorable and noble and suffer a short life, than do what is most economical at the cost of innocent life.

Problem is that by not taking care of problems like that, they're only making things worse for their goals in the long term. Right now, people are afraid of Synths in the Commonwealth. While it's not standard procedure in most places, people out there are already willing to shoot synths for the simple reason that they're a synth.

Now, Libertalia was a best case scenario- the Synth was dealt with by the Institute before anything bad could happen. As far as anyone knows, those raiders were put down hard by someone. However, what's the worst-case? Gabriel decides that it's not enough for him to simply raid for supplies, so he goes on a rampage trying to conquer the eastern seaboard. People will hear of him. And when he dies in combat (because of course he will), he will be known to be a synth. And people will hear of that, too.

Gabriel, the Scourge of the Commonwealth was a synth. You can literally feel the arguments about synths needing compassion simply melt under all that anger and fear- no amount of saying that all Synths aren't like that won't do a thing. Valentine might be permantenly thrown out of Diamond City. Hancock will likely be forced to shut down the Memory Den's side operation, if not shut it down entirely, or risk loosing control of Goodneighbor. And that will really hurt the Railroad, since they need the Den to protect Synths. Furthermore, they'll now face the issue that a Synth will most likely be killed the moment it's outed as a Synth. Before, it could rely on compassionate people. But now those people will be few and far between, even after knowing them for years.

All because they didn't want to keep tabs on escapees.

And it is their responsibilty, as they're throwing Synths out into a world that they're not really prepared for, nor does the world fully accept them.

Err how is he connected to the railroad? i didn't see anything that says that goodfeels was liberated by the railroad. unless I missed something

I'm pretty sure the group that freed Goodfeels was a pre-war hippy commune. Which is what Sunshine Tidings originally was.

However, the existence of Goodfeels IS undoubtedly supposed to draw parallels to what the Railroad is doing. A "where do you draw the line?" sort of thing. After all, if Synths are deserving of Freedom why not, say, Codsworth? Or that robot in Diamond City? Or Curie?

[Bold, underline, Italics and size mine]

There is zero evidence to support this. It also assumes that a person trying to fall off the radar can't do so with the railroad. With what resources should or does the railroad have to track down a synth that goes into hiding but leaves the railroad network? Your logic is fundamentally flawed, as it assumes that simply because a group help free someone from slavery or unjust incarceration that they then must keep track of them, that alone is flawed, but it also assumes that the Railraod has the resources of the institute and should be able to track ANYONE once they enter their organization even if they are trying to be elusive to the railroad. Smugglers who ferried Jews across the Baltic sea into Sweden where not at ALL responsible for unleashing them upon the Swedes. An individual is responsible for their own actions period. Any Jews who committed crimes in Sweden after escaping German occupied Denmark were responsible for their own crimes, the smuggler that ferried them isn't and can't reasonably be blamed. It is also unreasonable to expect that smuggler to keep in constant contact with "the Jews" they save. So why expect the railraod to be constant contact to watch over "the synths" they free?

The only reason why the railraod is blamed is because Synths are "the other" and as "the other" their threat is ALWAYS over inflated to the true threat. Yes Synths are dangerous in the same way a human is dangerous in the same way a ghoul MAY turn feral. Just as "the jew" was "the other" in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century so now "the synth" is "the other" in the 23rd century. "The other" is defined as being different from and alien to the social identity of a person and to the identity of the 'Self.' The threats by "the other" are always exaggerated. Humans become raider ALL the time the danger of a synth becoming a raider is the same thing. There is zero extraordinary dangers posed on the commonwealth from a synth in and of itself. There danger that synths pose is the exact same as humans, and yes the majority of synths are very dangerous. Not because they are synths but because they are part of and support an organization that will murder anyone to facilitate their goals and often take extreme measures when there is zero need for such measures. That is the actual danger that synths pose. They don't have an special ability to look exactly like someone else, that is an ability available to humans, they fraking advertise it in Diamond city. Face sculpting isn't an institute technology nor is it only possible if you are a synth. So that ability and danger isn't actually the sole providence of the institute.

Synths are feared solely because they are different not because of the special danger they pose. That is the ONLY reason. Fearing the institute is a very valid thing but "the synth" or a synth is not the institute. People don't fear humans just because the BOS murders people. Ghouls normally take role as "the other" in a fallout game but this time around they changed things up for the commonwealth and made synths the boogieman.

Still not connected to the railroad. To blame the railroad for being hippies because a SEPARATE group thinks robots should be free are hippies is REALLY faulty logic. It is like thinking the every vegetarian is a hindu because a group of hindus 200 years in the past were Vegans.

the railroad gives freedom and choice to slaves... you honestly cannot blame them for the choices made by others...

thats like saying im response able for that guy in Africa that kidnaps children to raise as soldiers for his army...

its not like they dont care about raiders or murderers, its just that they are there to free slaves, not frugging police the wasteland. if they were to "police" the people they free they would be no better than the instiutue, who wipes the synths memory the moment they do something "wrong"

the synths are sentient, regardless of what the institute says, and that means they will make choices that might not always be good. the railroad does their best to make sure they enter the wasteland in a way that will let them lead peaceful lives, but they cannot be totally responsible for what goes wrong..

i read a article about a Solar farm that was voted against, because a group of people were "afraid it would svck up all the solar energy". im not joking or being sarcastic, look it up yourself. its proof that creatures that profess themselves to be smart can be utterly stupid.

IRL? you cannot expect every child from a good loving home to not grow up and become a mass murderer. you equally cannot expect every parent to be completely accountable for their childs actions when they are 30 years old.

Video games are, by nature, a fruitless and pointless endeavor.

Which is awesome.

They can if they consider the Railroad just reprogramming Professor Goodfeels and letting him wander.

We need a reset code for Danse!

Wasn't blaming them for anything.

But clearly, the intent of the developers was to draw a parallel with The Railroad. "At what point do you stop?" "What's the extreme conclusion to this thinking?" etc.

Peaceful until they or someone else figures out they're a synth. The Railroad are responsible for wiping their memory and making them think they're human, and that's reckless.

agreed, as the problem is their fake memories and what the synth will actually and eventually observe is that they do not match. It has memories of growing up sleeping eating drinking etc etc, but a synth does not need to eat sleep or drink and a synth DOES NOT age. Eventually it will realize that memories are fake and will go psychotic.

They are not slaves. They are machines.

Human beings are born as infants, helpless and adapted to learn to be a human in the group in which they find themselves. Synths are an abomination of this natural process. The fact they have organs, blood, neural tissue, memories, personalities, etc., is all perfectly irrelevant. They are artificially produced; they are monsters.

Do you know what happens to monkeys who are denied proper parental rearing and socialization? They https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsA5Sec6dAI

If an entities identity depends on programming and not socialization it is a machine; if it depends largely on fixed-action patterns it is a relatively primitive animal (e.g., a fish or reptile). If it depends in large part on socialization, then it is an a more derived (recently evolved) animal. If it depends on socialization that involves intimate bonding between parent and offspring it is a mammal, and if that intimacy is a gateway into culture then it is a hominidae, and if that culture is exceptionally complex, voluminous and depends on language, then it is a human.

I believe that certain fundamental rights of "personhood" should be afforded to the other extant Great Apes, and I am wholly in favor of humane treatment of all animals. But I would never confuse a dog as a "slave," and it is no less absurd to confuse a synth as a slave or a human. Not to be critical of those who do, it is an understandable mistake and the designers wanted it that way. It is the whole point of the story element, to make us all stop and ponder what it means to be human.

In the absence of a childhood, relationships with caregivers and a broader community, no matter how sophisticated the cognitive abilities of the entity it simply cannot be a human because it has not experienced the requisite lifelong socialization process that all humans experience to some degree or another. A human being's identity cannot be programmed, and to the extent that it was, it would be a broken, monstrous thing, which is what the developers of the game give us plenty of evidence synths amount to.

ADDIT: and just to elaborate a bit here . . . I don't, like the BoS regard any and all "androids" as abominations in the same way the BoS does. An android like Data from Star Trek the Next Generation is exemplary of the identity such an entity could be programmed to have that would be an almost universal benefit. Data has no presumption whatsoever about "being human" and he would never try to pass himself off as human or betray his oath as a Star Fleet officer by betraying humans in general. Even while he is the first to remind you he is a machine, he has sensitivity, personality, he even seemed to develop complex emotions over time.

The real problem with the Synths in FO4 is not that they are machines that resemble humans and can do many human tasks, it is that they are used by the Institute to impersonate humans, they are led to believe they are humans by the Railroad, and they are not programmed with the sorts of fail safes that Data seems to have included that would have prevented him from duplicity and wanton harm against humans.

Synths are fine, as long as every single one of them is programmed with a failsafe mechanism that makes them incapable of impersonating or harming a human, and of course without the "programming" of real peoples memories and identities.

I think whoever thought to make synths, to push it this far, was making an extremely unethical decision. That was a bit of an abominable decision. However, they succeeded and made sentient beings; sentient beings with hopes, dreams, moral capacity, and every other human trait. Trying to separate them into some sub-human category, however you choose to go about that, boils down to vain pseudo-intellectual babble. The argument for their personhood is pretty much airtight and validated by multiple in-game NPCs. Even Father has a moment when he is sending you after Gabriel where he softly admits they (synths) have AT LEAST sentient capacity.

They are persons, not human beings (homo sapiens if you prefer) but still persons. Valentine has me sold entirely on this fact, say what you will, but you have to use in-game evidence in consideration for your arguments, not just what you think about them as an abstraction.

Go read his terminals again. He does mention being part of the Minutemen in the first entry I believe and that he and his group splintered off when the Minutemen dissolved after Quincy. Not sure if he was at Quincy, he might have been with that group you said.

Here's an interesting wrinkle for Gabriel-

He's not the guy who wrote those entries. That is someone named James Wire, who you can meet (and shoot) if you go to Libertalia before the Institute sends you there.

So, we don't know where Gabriel came from. He could have been a Minutemen, or a raider who joined up at Libertalia after Wire went full-blown Raider.

I think Railroad are simply some kind of terorrist fighting against their owners, so for me they are like illegal resistance, that has more of reasons to fight those who owned them before, because they are much more in danger from them. So it is not just their choice, but also necessity.

And they are simply sabotaging the process, because they don't have the power to change anything really.

So it is just quite interesting to have such group in a game, but I think they could be useful only in connection with some other group.

They are sapient and sentient entities. Which makes how the institute treats them slavery.

All the rest about what is a human or not is irrelevant fluff.

Those journal entries were written by Wire, not Gabriel. Wire was the original leader of Libertalia. If you visit Libertalia before the Institute quest Wire is there. Once you start the Institute quest, however, Wire gets replaced by Gabriel.

Well, hot damn.

Thank you, Marss. I had no idea that Gabriel replaced the figure who wrote those journals. James Wire, huh? I'll have to remember that.

They hate freedom.

Synths are not slaves, since they are not real people. Synths are ultimately manmade machines owned by the Institute. They can treat them as they see fit. RR has no moral rights to "free" them.

Has been said that they are close to human. Well "close" is not enough. Someone can say, that apes are close to humans. Still not humans, and I value humans over any other, manmade or not.

RR is ready to kill real people to free synths. Inferior moral value.

RR offers nice agent style gameplay, but ideologically very silly faction.

Simply put, because people want something to hate, and decided to hate the railroad.

Why the RR over the other three factions? There has to be a reason to many people, in unison, decided to hate specifically the RR.